Led by Wang Jianlin, Asia’s richest man, the Chinese conglomerate Dalian Wanda Group continues to expand their global film empire through a recent agreement to acquire Mtime, a Beijing-based film and media company, for $350 million. Mtime’s business also comprises film marketing and a rapidly growing e-commerce platform with an ability to target China’s growing movie merchandising sector
This agreement follows a series of momentous moves being made by Wanda over the past year. In January, Wanda group purchased Legendary Entertainment for $3.5 billion, then also bought Odeon & UCI Cinemas Group, a European movie chain, for $1.2 billion in June.
“The key business components of both companies provide an unprecedented opportunity to scale our services… I am very excited about what this new integration brings to both sides of the movie market,” said Mtime founder and CEO Kelvin Hou
Mtime was started in 2005 as a listings site for movie showtimes, but through steady growth and addition of new features the site has become a signpost location for everything movies. To compare Mtime to more established sites—the company is like IMDb, Rotten Tomatores, Fandango and Entertainment Tonight all wrapped in one website.